Liturgical Winners & Losers

[Denise]

Liturgical Winners & Losers

March 2012

The world’s English-speaking Catholics are now entering the fourth full month of worshiping according to the Third Typical Edition of the Roman Missal. This missal, which was introduced at the parish level this past Advent, provides a more accurate English translation of the Latin original than its predecessors. It has restored a number of biblical references that had been lost, added a depth and richness to the prayers, and infused the Mass with a greater sense of sacredness.

We hope that by now you’ve grown accustomed to the new phrasings required of the congregation: “And with your spirit,” “consubstantial with the Father,” “His holy Church,” “enter under my roof,” etc. Indications are that the transition to the revised missal has, for the most part, come off smoothly and successfully, save for the occasional — and inevitable — verbal hiccup committed by priest or parishioners, which with practice will soon become a thing of the past.

The revisions to the missal, which seem relatively minor from the layman’s point of view, are the result of a major undertaking. It has taken some thirty years for this third edition to work its way down to us on the ground. The decades-long process pitted liberal American prelates against their curial counterparts and, in the end, discredited the old-guard at the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). The final result, happily received by faithful Catholics in the pew, has driven to despair the champions of the laissez-faire liturgics that came to define Catholic worship after the Second Vatican Council.

When the bishops of the world convened for Vatican II, they agreed, almost to a man, that the Church’s liturgy was in need of renewal. The general feeling was that the time had come for a greater use of the vernacular in the liturgy. Accordingly, the first document issued by the Council Fathers was Sacrosanctum Concilium, the “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” (1963). It called on the Church to “undertake with great care a restoration of the liturgy,” so that the “intrinsic nature and purpose” of the Sacrifice of the Mass (yes, this term is frequently employed) “may be more clearly manifested” and, therefore, “produce its full effects.” Sacrosanctum Concilium set forth a few basic norms and general guidelines and then urged that the process be completed “as soon as possible.”

Within six years, in 1969, the “New Mass” was introduced in parishes worldwide. Sacrosanctum Concilium had left the decision to the “competent territorial ecclesiastical authority” as to “whether and to what extent” the vernacular could be used. The bishops’ conferences in the English-speaking world, like their counterparts virtually everywhere else, went whole hog with the vernacular. The translation of the revamped Latin missal into English, however, spearheaded by the ICEL, was haphazardly done and contained a number of curious renderings, outright mis­translations, and omissions. Nevertheless, this Mass quickly became the standard mode of worship in the Church, or what is now known as the “ordinary form of the Roman rite of the Mass.”

Another six years hence, in 1975, the English translation went through a series of revisions, resulting in the Second Typical Edition of the Roman Missal. Yet the problems that plagued the first edition persisted. After another half-dozen years transpired, the bishops of the English-speaking world decided that the missal was in need of further updating, so they commissioned a new translation from the ICEL. By this time, the leadership of the ICEL had come under the sway of feminism, and the translations they produced over the next decade were imbued with “inclusive language.” The episcopal conferences that commissioned the new translation essentially rubber-stamped whatever the ICEL sent down the pike.

But the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) wasn’t such an easy sell. Increasingly uneasy with the thought that the Mass was being used as a platform for ideological indoctrination, the CDW began to comb through the ICEL’s submissions. Word of its troublesome translations of liturgical texts, as well as the Revised New American Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, reached Pope John Paul II, who took the occasion of a December 1993 ad limina visit by the bishops of the western U.S. to express his displeasure. “One of your responsibilities,” he told them, “is to make available exact and appropriate translations of the official liturgical books…. The arduous task of translation must guard the full doctrinal integrity and, according to the genius of each language, the beauty of the original texts.” The “language of prayer,” the Holy Father insisted, must be “free from doctrinal ambiguity and ideological influence.”

The Pope’s message, however, fell on deaf ears. The ICEL’s final revision of the Roman missal, submitted to the CDW in 1998 by the English-speaking bishops’ conferences, was far from an exact, appropriate translation, and failed — perhaps to an even greater extent than its predecessors — to guard the beauty and doctrinal integrity of the Latin original. (Excerpts from the infamous 1998 missal can be found online.)

Initially, the CDW responded with a stony silence. Then it embarked on a series of unprecedented moves that put the English-speaking bishops’ conferences on notice. The dicastery rejected the ICEL’s 1998 missal. It formed a new committee, Vox Clara (“Clear Voice,” the only one of its kind in the world), to work with the ICEL, stripping it of its independence from Roman oversight. And in 2001 it issued its dénouement with the promulgation of Liturgiam Authenticam, its instruction setting forth the definitive, universal norms for the translation of biblical and liturgical texts into the vernacular.

Not surprisingly, Liturgiam Authenticam echoed — and expanded upon — John Paul’s message to the bishops of the western U.S. The instruction aimed to correct the “omissions and errors which affect certain vernacular translations,” and to ensure that the original Latin texts are rendered “faithfully and accurately into the vernacular language.” Inclusive language was firmly within the CDW’s crosshairs: The instruction stated unequivocally that the Church “should not be subject to externally imposed linguistic norms that are detrimental to her mission.”

According to ICEL sympathizer John Wilkins, Litur­giam Authenticam “overturned the entire basis on which ICEL’s work had rested for nearly forty years” (Commonweal, Dec. 2, 2005). That basis was a controversial translation method known as “dynamic equivalence,” a method that takes a decidedly less-than-literal approach to translation. Rather, it attempts to convey the approximate “message” of a text in such a way that it will be easily understood by the receptor through the use of common, everyday phrases and expressions.

In his highly informative book Mass Misunderstandings: The Mixed Legacy of the Vatican II Liturgical Reforms, Kenneth D. Whitehead observes that the ICEL’s preference for dynamic equivalence virtually assured that “major departures” from the original Latin would be taken; its use “was almost bound to rob [the translations] of some of the grandeur, mystery, and dignity that ought to be required in any genuine liturgical text.” The result has been the “flat, pedestrian and prosaic” translations Catholics suffered with for the first forty years of praying the vernacular Mass.

The missal in use since last November, however, adheres to the principles set forth in Liturgiam Authen­ticam and is the result of a decade’s worth of revisions by the ICEL working in tandem with Vox Clara that received the approval of the CDW. This missal has not, however, met with the approval of Catholics of a certain ideological bent.

It has been argued that the use of dynamic equivalence is encouraged by Sacrosanctum Concilium itself: Progressive-minded liturgists point to the constitution’s call for texts that “radiate a noble simplicity.” Texts are to be “short, clear, free from useless repetition,” and “within the people’s power of comprehension.” This passage is the hinge on which progressive Catholics' resistance to the third edition of the missal turns.

Leading the charge has been Bishop Donald Traut­man of Erie, Pennsylvania. In a July 2010 article in U.S. Catholic, he criticized the new translation for being “remote from everyday speech and frequently not understandable” — i.e., in supposed violation of the dictates of Sacrosanctum Concilium. As evidence, he pointed to the prayer after communion in the Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit, which reads, “Let the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, O Lord, cleanse our hearts and make them fruitful within by the sprinkling of his dew,” and Eucharistic Prayer II in the Ordinary of the Mass, which reads, “Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall.” Though His Excellency admitted that these prayers are “pregnant with poetry and scriptural meaning,” he stated that “if they fail to be understood by the average worshiper, they fail pastorally.”

The common trait these two revised prayers share is the analogical use of dew and dewfall. Since when has dew been a foreign concept to average Catholics? It’s something the majority of us encounter most mornings on the way to work or school. Its use here is straightforward and entirely appropriate: Like the morning dew, the Holy Spirit is active in the world, often imperceptibly, though the results of His actions are evident to those of us who bother to take notice. This is in no way beyond our “power of comprehension.”

To suggest that these prayers fail pastorally because they are incomprehensible is to imply that the Bible itself is incomprehensible and therefore a pastoral failure, given that these prayers are, as the good bishop acknowledges, full of “scriptural meaning.” Surely this isn’t what he meant to say.

But who can be sure? A year earlier, at a Catholic University of America lecture, Bishop Trautman accused the missal of containing “vocabulary [that] is not readily understandable by the average Catholic.” He pointed to its use of terms like ineffable, incarnate, inviolate, oblation, ignominy, precursor, suffused, and unvanquished. Perhaps Bishop Trautman is stuck in a time warp. Does he not know that English-speaking Catholics en masse have long been joining the ranks of the educated class — in the most highly educated, prosperous, and technologically advanced society in the history of the world? An illiterate laity is a thing of the past. Every single one of us has access to a dictionary, millions with instantaneous fingertip access via smart phones, and is more than capable of learning a handful of new words — words many of us already know. Those who aren't familiar with these words can easily be taught their meaning at parish meetings or in homilies.

Regardless, Bishop Trautman ought to know that appealing to the old “pastoral” saw won't cut it. In a June 2006 letter to the American bishops, Francis Cardinal Arinze, then-prefect of the CDW, proscribed this tactic: “It is not acceptable,” he wrote, “to maintain that people have become accustomed to a certain translation for the past thirty or forty years, and therefore that it is pastorally advisable to make no changes. Where there are good and strong reasons for a change, as has been determined by this dicastery in regard to the entire translation of the Missale Romanum as well as other important texts, then the revised text should make the needed changes.”

And the needed changes have been made. But the way in which they were made has stoked the ire of progressive Catholics. They have reacted with considerable fury that the CDW had to step in and seize control of the translation process from the ICEL. Anthony Ruff, O.S.B., former chairman of the ICEL’s music committee, wrote an open letter to the U.S. bishops (published by the Jesuit weekly America, Feb. 14, 2011), in which he huffed that the translation process had been “hijacked” and is “part of a larger pattern of top-down impositions by a central authority.” Fr. Michael G. Ryan, also writing in America (Dec. 14, 2009), characterized the missal as “a weapon” that is being used in the “systematic dismantling of the great vision” of Sacrosanctum Concilium. On the contrary, what is being dismantled, if anything, is the warped vision of the Council and its documents that allowed for faulty translations and liturgical abuses.

Fr. Ryan’s animus toward the revised missal is so strong that he predicted, in all seriousness, that its implementation would be “an almost certain fiasco.” Even more outraged was Eugene Cullen Kennedy who, blogging at the National Catholic Reporter website (May 27, 2010), foresaw “bloody consequences”! To their undoubtedly great disappointment, the missal was introduced in parishes across the English-speaking world without much disruption and without eliciting a violent uprising. Instead, faithful Catholics have taken it all in stride, trusting in the wisdom of the Church and trying to draw ever closer to the Lord in prayer and worship. Imagine that.

In an editorial timed to coincide with the missal launch, the National Catholic Reporter admitted that “a battle has been lost” (Nov. 25, 2011). Well, yes. The successful implementation of the third edition represents a stinging defeat for the progressive faction of the Church, and a resounding victory for the “reform of the reform” party. “How different things have become,” wrote a dejected Tom Roberts, NCR editor-at-large, earlier this year (Jan. 20). “I’m one of those who simply have to get over it.” His is a fitting farewell to an era that history has judged inefficacious.

As Rosemary Lunar­dini wrote in the November 2010 NOR, the Church has taken a “defining step toward authentic liturgical reform.” It was inevitable that, after stumbling through the first phase, the Church would gain some liturgical equilibrium — not only with the introduction of the third edition of the missal but also with the liberalization of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. Though hastily — even recklessly — begun, the process of liturgical reform appears to have reached a stage of maturation. And indications are that the maturation process is just beginning, that this defining step is only a “first step.” There will likely be, Lunardini wrote, “a new Bible translation for use in the lectionary; a congruence of some aspects of the vernacular and Latin (Tridentine) Masses; and probably more missal updates from the heritage of the Church” — perhaps these are the “other important texts” mentioned by Cardinal Arinze. What this means, Lunardini suggested, is that “it is not too early to say that there are abundant signs that we are living in an age of true liturgical renewal.” If such is the case, then we are finally beginning to realize the long-awaited fruits of Vatican II.



New Oxford Notes: March 2012

[KarlB]

he huffed that the translation process had been “hijacked” and is “part of a larger pattern of top-down impositions by a central authority

..by the Vicar of Christ. I didn't know the process was so exhaustive.. or controvercial. The difference is not that noticeable in the vernacular.

The Mixed Legacy of the Vatican II Liturgical Reforms, Kenneth D. Whitehead observes that the ICEL’s preference for dynamic equivalence virtually assured that “major departures” from the original Latin would be taken; its use “was almost bound to rob [the translations] of some of the grandeur, mystery, and dignity that ought to be required in any genuine liturgical text.” The result has been the “flat, pedestrian and prosaic” translations Catholics suffered with for the first forty years of praying the vernacular Mass.

I'd argue it might be impossible to replicate the Latin Mass in the vernacular, it is too associated with day to day banalities in the mind of a celebrant.. removing an essential sense of moving into a separate, mystical and cloistered space.